Since 500char was nowhere enough to express my disappointment with this server, and because my review was deleted by the owner without any reply, I'll have to post it here.

When the server was first announced to make a comeback under a different staff in November, there was a lot of hype and excitement in the official FB page which had around 1.5k followers, mostly carried by the popularity of the original essenceRO which was imo the best mid rate server of its era. I personally had a lot of hope for this server and I've been playing daily since launch. However, that hype took a nose dive very quickly since the server has opened for reasons down below.

But first, let's talk about the few pros of the server.1- Balanced donation rewards (mostly cosmetics and convenience items)2- MVPs that require teamwork3- Lots of hats4- There's usually a patch every 2 weeks to bring new changes (for the better or worse)5- SOME of the GMs are fair, reasonable, and actually want to make the server better (Tempy, Vide, Strife)

Now, you may ask, these could make a good foundation for a decent midrate server, what aspects of the server are dragging down the enjoyments so much?...

- Due to the lack of content and the heavy mismanagement of the server, the server population has been steadily declining from 300 to an average of 150 (120 at the time of this post). People are so uninterested that they don't even bother running their vendors anymore because there's just no realistic content.

- Bugs upon bugs upon bugs, at one point, players were able to use the party warper to get into castles.

- When the server first launched, there were many zeny exploits, and it took the admins about 3 weeks to fix them, by that time, the server is already overflowing with zeny. People had too much zeny, and nothing to buy (only 5 MVPs are released). When the exploits were finally fixed, many people were banned instead of having their zenies & items wiped out, causing 2 whole guilds to quit the server.

- WOE has been broken forever. The vast of the majority of castle treasure boxes are still original iRO chests with crap items like Bucklers or Mufflers instead of the custom chests that were implemented. The castle portal to Eeyolbriggar still doesn't spawn when WOE starts, Kiwi has to spawn portal manually and ONLY SHE can do it. Case in point: this week's WOE was 30 minutes late because Kiwi was sick and only logged in 30 minutes into WOE.

- Many changes are made without any discussion whatsoever (not even between GMs). eg. In the latest patch, certain MVP items were added to BG vendors, which is a big controversy among the remaining players, many of the GMs didn't even know about the change and are currently split on their position regarding this change.

- Testers and Council members' opinions don't even matter, they only serve as secondary opinions while Kiwi does whatever she wants. A lot of changes aren't tested before they are released. (eg. new MVP drops like acolyte figures being rental account-bound items, Kraken dropping Cthulhu card at 100% rate (fixed now but people already got it))

- Devs have an unrealistic expectations of how much effort players should be making to get rewarded. eg. there are custom world bosses spawning every 3-6 hours, when killed, every participant will receive ONE boss token which can be exchanged at ridiculous rates like 120 tokens for an icepick. Those bosses have dozens of millions of HP (tankiest one having 95m) and require a lot of people to bring down, thus they are mostly ignored except during peak hours.

- Some of the GMs on this server are very inexperienced and wouldn't last a week on any other modern servers. Many of them are treating this server as if it was the original EssenceRO with 1k+ players, when in fact it's been bleeding out players since day 1. So let's talk about a few, in no particular order:

GM Gear (Enforcement GM) - Kiwi's friend. Power-trips whenever he gets his hand on the mouse. Is so inexperienced with RO that he confuses custom GRF with Cheat Engine. Makes up names of cheats like "Extender" (hence my username) when he doesn't recognize an in-game mechanic and scolds people for using it. Constantly polices the Discord channel and in-game chats on a server with a dwindling population and hands out warnings for the pettiest reasons. Threatens to jail/ban people for dual-clienting in pvp room and survival arena (co-op event where people join up to fight against waves of mobs) when there's usually 4-5 people attending this event. If you don't play the game his way, he's going to call you out on it. Plays for one of the remaining guilds whose name starts with "S" and ends with "ymphony", and is willing to turn a blind eye if you make an offense as long you're his guildmate. Here's a tip for you Gear: preventing dual-clients in SA when the server has 1k+ players makes sense, doing it when there's barely 150 doesn't.

GM Strawberry (Admin) - Also Kiwi's friend. She's apparently a developer, yet her name is never credited in any of the patch notes ever unlike GM Tempy, Kiwi, Vide, or Technoken's. Has yet to do much besides hosting hide&seek events and flaunting her banhammer over non-issues (same as above). Constantly has Symphony members crying into her ears, and pandering to them about everything from class balance to in-game behavior. Enforces rules that aren't even in the rule list because she'll "look bad if she doesn't".

GM Kiwi (Owner) - The final boss. Has trust issues towards most of her staff members and is unwilling to delegate tasks. Despite having multiple admins and devs, none of her staff members can initiate server reboots or patches besides herself, so if she (or her kid) happens to be sick and the server crashes, enjoy the wait because none of the other GMs can do anything. Hires her friends to become GMs left and right without the head GM's consent. Shuts down when she has to face criticism, she has her own vision for the server and only follows that, regardless of what the playerbase demands (eg. ignoring the forum poll for a better WOE time and opts for her own instead, even wanted to make it 7AM EST on a whim so that her aussie friend can attend it but that didn't go through). Polices everything from in-game chat, to Discord, to even things said in WOE videos in private voice chats, completely broke down when she watched one of the videos posted on eRO Discord and posted a long rant about why it's not ok to talk in a certain way (and I quote "if you can't say something to your mother, don't say it to anyone"). Recently banned one of the most active players in-game for Discord toxicity. @item'd Gemini, Randgris, Beelzebub gears for herself so that she can WOE before those monsters are even implemented in the game. Once gave out a GM position to someone because they donated a few grands (which she used to fix her kitchen floors). If you don't constantly brown-nose her and get on her good side, you'll have a bad time.

ex-GM Hank (ex Head GM) - Straight up used @item to get himself a Tao Gunka card and a s*** load of zeny during the first 2-3 weeks and then flaunted about it in his little private chat with some of his Symphony buddies. Decided to nerf Gunslingers after getting PK'ed by one in a mvpvp map and tries to claim that they have "data" that Gunslingers are overpowered. After getting replaced by the new Head GM Rei, he's somehow still allowed to play despite having blatantly used gm commands to get himself items. He's also a passive aggressive prick but that's cool because he's also a Symphony member.

I didn't think a worse staff combo than Paradox/Mulder/Faustus (eRO v1 staff) was possible, but good job Kiwi, you made it happen.

I remember grinding out this server when it was first brought back for a few weeks.Was one of the richest legit players and also donated a whole bunch. a bunch of players that did the zeny exploits were still around, i knew many that abused the Battlegrounds rewards when you could sell them to NPCS.

Right when that guild Symphony appeared and people were told a bunch of them were actually GMs made me leave, they also had way too many Donation Credits, which im pretty sure they didn't paid for.

Was also a member of a guild that only farmed / MvP'd didnt really care about the drama until i found these GMs were all gearing up and helping there friends in that symphony guild. I haven't even played since december and i still see the name Ramen coming up on others RMS posts.

Your review on the website was deleted because you made it with a second account using a disposable email address. Now you are likely making a new account in the forum to post this and we do not account users to have more than one account.

- Due to the lack of content and the heavy mismanagement of the server, the server population has been steadily declining from 300 to an average of 150 (120 at the time of this post). People are so uninterested that they don't even bother running their vendors anymore because there's just no realistic content.

I think this is bound to happen regardless of anything else you posted.

I remember this server years ago and I can't say I didn't try to play the 2nd version recently. I had the same user name on rms when a post about Symphony GM abused her @kill command to kill someone who was Pk-ing her group.

It seems like the trend continue where the admins favour one certain guild and I can't blame them when the main donor is from that guild.

I wouldn't be surprised if this server will follow it's predecessor, a wipe then followed by a shut down, but in a shorter amount of time.

I can agree with 90% of wht the OP says. The other 10%? I can't agree because I didn't play enough to see how bad this server got destroyed by an incompetent staff.

Let's throwback to when the server was yet to be released.

Kiwi had made an application form for people to apply as beta testers. Looking it from the player's side, that's actually an amazing way to prevent bugs and other s*** to be in the real deal, since being an Admin/GM doesn't make you really omniscient and you can miss out on a few bugs, so having people to look out for them was a pretty nice, and from a veteran RO player, this gave me nice vibes about how "professional" Kiwi supposedly was.

My application form was rejected, but a friend's got accepted so I was like, okay.

The day of the grand release comes, and what waits for us? A limited stylist with the basic hairstyles and like 80 color palettes, nonworking 3rd job skills, a half assed main town which had tons of npcs, many 2nd skills not working, either. And the worst of all: Zeny exploits.

First of all, there was an Alchemy book exploit which combined with overcharge and discount would make you insanely rich in no time. This issue got reverted, the player in question got banned. People didn't care enough, and neither did I, because many people would expect some bugs to sneak on the first day. It's something super normal, so we all moved on.

I joined eRO on day 2. First thing I did was to check the many NPCs who would sell mats for 3rd classes. Shortly after that I just went to discord and pmed Kiwi myself to tell her about the tons and tons of zeny exploits that were there

Just to give a small taste of all the items that would easily allow a zeny exploit. Light Granule, Elder Branch, Suicidal Device, Iron Cannon Ball, etc. It was insane. My hopes went down immediately. I made like 50m in 2 minutes by doing that s***.

This just shows how bad and incompetent this staff is and how they only wanted to milk on the reputation of what a good mid rates server used to be back then. This is nothing like the old EssenceRO. To be honest, I'm surprised this server hasn't died YET.

Just to give a small taste of all the items that would easily allow a zeny exploit. Light Granule, Elder Branch, Suicidal Device, Iron Cannon Ball, etc. It was insane. My hopes went down immediately. I made like 50m in 2 minutes by doing that s***.

I've seen accidents like this before on test servers, but not on a live server. That's some pretty gross incompetence. That's usually why if you're going to modify an item to be sold by an NPC, it's better to modify the item_db sell price.